Key Take-Aways
Equitable edtech systems are driven by stakeholder input. Edtech leaders should actively engage educators, students, and families to identify and prioritize the real needs of the community they serve.
A clear vision for teaching and learning should drive edtech systems. School- and system-level edtech leaders should ensure their decisions are rooted in bringing powerful, equitable visions for technology-enabled instruction to life.
Continuous improvement processes enhance accessibility. Edtech leaders should establish and maintain processes for regularly evaluating and improving the accessibility of their tools.
Distributed leadership sustains edtech system improvement. Empowering teachers and school leaders to take active roles in the implementation and evaluation of edtech tools fosters a culture of collaboration.
Overview
This profile describes one school system team’s participation in The Learning Accelerator (TLA)'s EdTech Peer Learning Cohort offered in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Office of Educational Technology (MA DESE OET). This profile highlights one example of the real-world application of the EdTech Systems Guide and TLA’s Driving EdTech Systems resources that help leaders put this guidance into practice, detailing their participation and describing high-level takeaways for school and system-level edtech leaders.
Natick Public Schools, a district located outside of Boston, participated in the 2023-24 EdTech Peer Learning Cohort facilitated by TLA in partnership with MA DESE OET. This cohort brought together teams led by school- and system-level edtech leaders across Massachusetts to develop and strengthen edtech systems and practices in alignment with the EdTech Systems Guide produced by TLA and MA DESE OET in 2021. With the support of a TLA coach, teams audited their edtech systems to identify challenges and then designed and implemented solutions to make system-level improvements. Throughout the implementation of the cohort, participants reported on their progress, shared their learnings, and collaborated with other teams in monthly whole-group sessions. This profile details each of the following sections to highlight the team’s work during this time, and elevate themes, practices, and resources edtech leaders might adopt within their contexts:
Problems of Practice: This section outlines the specific problem of practice Natick identified to focus on, their reasons for choosing this problem, and the progress they made in addressing it.
Leadership in Action: This section highlights key leadership decisions that contributed to Natick’s success.
Conditions for Success: This section discusses the conditional factors that supported Natick’s progress.
Demographics: This section provides an overview of Natick’s student demographics during the 2023-24 EdTech Peer Learning Cohort, offering context for their work that may be helpful for other schools or systems attempting to apply similar lessons.
Problems of Practice
Participants in the EdTech Peer Learning Cohort were expected to identify a problem of practice that would strengthen the selection, implementation, or evaluation processes in their edtech systems. To identify their problems of practice, teams analyzed their needs by completing self-assessments of their edtech practices, engaging stakeholders, analyzing data, reflecting on their school or system goals, and understanding opportunities to promote equity. Ultimately, they organized their systems improvement efforts around a singular problem of practice that simplified their improvement efforts into one question (e.g., “How can I use asynchronous supports to expand my capacity?” or “What are the characteristics of effective expectations for and instructional uses of edtech tools?”). The table below describes Natick’s problem of practice and their progress toward addressing it.
2023-24
| What was their problem of practice? | How can the processes for edtech tool selection and evaluation be strengthened to center students who have historically been marginalized or impacted by digital inequities? |
| Why did they choose this? | Recent changes in their student population highlighted the need to better address both digital and linguistic accessibility from the onset of edtech selection processes. Because Natick already had a robust edtech selection process in place that screened for student safety, data privacy, and interoperability, they decided to focus on improving their selection process to explicitly center the needs of students with disabilities and English language learners. At the same time, the district identified the need to streamline the number of edtech tools they were financially committing to and supporting each year. They saw an opportunity to add an additional element to the selection process that would identify whether new tools offered duplicative services or functionalities with those already purchased and deployed throughout the district, and to streamline implementation efforts around a set of key tools. |
| What progress did they make? | Recognizing the need to revise their edtech selection criteria to include an explicit check for digital and linguistic accessibility, the team began by aligning on shared definitions for each. They then crafted a selection criteria tool based on this shared language. Piloting this tool with a handful of selection decisions, the team reported that stakeholders involved in the pilot found the tool particularly helpful in clarifying the district's priorities in edtech selections and building transparency into the selection process. In addition to revising their selection process, the team identified linguistic accessibility as one key criteria to focus on during their implementation efforts. Based on these criteria, the team assembled a list of what they called “Superpower Tools,” around which they focused professional development sessions and developed implementation support. |
Leadership in Action
One of the many lessons covered in the EdTech Peer Learning Cohort is the importance of dedicated leadership in driving edtech systems improvements. Natick’s team made significant progress in addressing their problem of practice largely due to specific leadership decisions made throughout their participation. Among these, five key leadership moves contributed to their success:
Create Shared Understanding and Language: Accessibility takes many forms and can mean different things to different people based on their prior experiences and knowledge. To ensure the team was working toward common goals and understanding of accessibility, they engaged in and aligned through discussions with additional stakeholders around the definitions of digital and linguistic accessibility, barriers to each, and their vision for Natick’s edtech systems.
Center the Most Vulnerable Populations: With growing numbers of English learners entering the Natick school system, leaders realized they needed to create stronger systems for supporting all students. The team recognized the need to improve their edtech processes to be more equitable and inclusive, and prioritized the needs of historically marginalized groups to drive their work.
Create Transparency in Processes: Involving stakeholders like teachers and school leaders in the pilot efforts for the selection criteria tool helped clarify the edtech leadership team’s priorities, rationale, and decisions to those who might not have otherwise had this level of insight.
Ensure Replicability: Systems leadership should work to ensure that systems and processes are not reliant on specific individuals to produce positive results. By testing the selection criteria tool with multiple edtech tools, the team was able to ensure that the tool worked systematically and could be replicated by other team members.
Engage Key Decision-Makers: Systems-level change requires collaboration among systems-level leaders. Recognizing this, the Natick team included district level leaders (e.g., assistant superintendents, directors of functions like SEL, finance, student services that overlap with technology) in their change processes. These leaders each represented critical decision-makers whose buy-in allowed the work to move more quickly and whose perspectives ensured greater impact of the edtech selection criteria.
Conditions for Success
Systems improvement work does not happen in a vacuum but exists within and is influenced by several conditional factors. When considering Natick’s progress, it is important to consider the conditions that supported this success. TLA’s Innovative Teaching Implementation Framework provides a framework for better understanding the conditions that surround planning, adoption, and scaling of innovative initiatives, and it can be used to identify those conditions that accelerated Natick’s edtech systems improvement efforts, including:
Visioning: The team maintained a clear vision of the technology-enabled teaching and learning experiences they wanted for learners with disabilities and students learning English. They continually referred back to this vision, asking themselves how changes in the selection and support of edtech tools enabled it.
Continuous Improvement: Rather than discarding their robust edtech selection process, Natick responded to changes in their district by strengthening the existing process and adding criteria to address emerging needs.
Technology and Data Infrastructure: The team’s work identifying their “Superpower Tools” was facilitated by their understanding of the edtech tools used across their system. Using ClassLink, they identified which tools were being used, how frequently, and by whom, and monitored changes in Superpower Tool usage to understand the impact of their adoption support efforts.
Professional Development and Learning: After identifying their Superpower Tools, the team held professional development sessions to share the tools’ use cases and help distinguish them. These sessions included time for teachers to explore the tools and provided information on available support resources. Additionally, the district's multi-year equity initiative had primed staff members to incorporate equity into their edtech processes through ongoing professional development.
Demographics
The following charts represent Natick’s student demographics during the 2023-24 EdTech Peer Learning Cohort. Natick’s edtech systems improvement work was directly informed by changes in their demographic data, providing important context for their efforts. Additional information about Natick’s demographics can be found in MA DESE’s School and District Profiles.
This profile is a part of TLA's Driving EdTech Systems series, which accompanies the EdTech Systems Guide developed in partnership with MA DESE OET. Explore the full guide to find additional strategies, insights, and resources.
Strategy Resources
Natick Public Schools’ EdTech Selection Tool
Natick Public Schools uses this spreadsheet to help leaders make decisions about new edtech tools... Learn More
Natick Public Schools’ Superpower EdTech Tools
A set of six edtech tools endorsed by Natick Public Schools that are widely usable... Learn More
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Natick Public Schools educate approximately 5,300 students from pre-K through age 22. The district is provides services for diverse students and their families from Natick and Boston, Massachusetts.
